Circuit arrangements with electronic power switches, in other words electronic switches, such as, for example, diodes, transistors, insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT), integrated gate commutated thyristors (IGCT) or modules with these components and capacitors are frequently used in devices for generating power, for example in a rectifier or inverter of a wind energy plant, a photovoltaic plant or in other power generators with inverter technology. The at least one capacitor, generally a plurality of capacitors, is used to provide a direct voltage intermediate circuit. By switching the electronic switch on and off, alternating current is converted into direct current or the other way round. When switching the electronic power switches on and off, high switching speeds are required in order to keep power losses low overall. As a result, large power variations are produced, which induce voltages which should be kept as low as possible. For this purpose it is necessary to keep the inductivity of the connections between the switches and the direct voltage intermediate circuit as small as possible. For this reason, the electronic power switches are connected to the capacitors by direct current laminates, which are kept as thin, flat and wide as possible, so large overlap regions are produced, in which currents flowing in the opposite direction are closely adjacent and the magnetic fields produced overlap one another. This means that the magnetic fields generated eliminate one another so the inductance of the current-carrying components is very low.
A circuit arrangement of this type is known from the German patent DE 197 32 402 B4 and has a direct current laminate consisting of two metal plates arranged adjacently and insulated with respect to one another, which is used to connect electronic power switches to a capacitor bank. The capacitors are electrically connected by a plurality of connection elements, which are arranged at a first spacing, to the direct current laminate and arranged on one side of the direct current laminate. The electronic power switches are arranged angled in the circuit arrangement known from the prior art, so the electronic power switches are arranged next to the direct current laminate. The electronic power switches are furthermore electrically connected to connection extensions of the direct current laminate. This arrangement has the drawback that, on the one hand, the direct current laminates have to be individually adapted to the embodiments of the electronic power switches, so when using electronic power switches of different producers and design, different direct current laminates have to be constructed and produced. On the other hand, the use of space of this circuit arrangement is not optimal. An aim in the construction of corresponding circuit arrangements is, however, to achieve as compact a structure as possible in order to minimise the space requirement. Finally, the known circuit arrangement cannot readily be scaled to higher powers.
Proceeding from this, the present invention is based on the object of providing a circuit arrangement, which has a significantly reduced space requirement and simultaneously improved scalability. Moreover, a power generation device with a correspondingly small space requirement is to be proposed.